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Milblogs and Military PR

Posted By Elisa On 28th March 2006 @ 11:48 In rankism and the state, new world order | No Comments

My friend [1] Jon Garfunkel is doing some research on [2] milblogs. Naively thinking that milblogs were about the authentic voice of soldiers, I thought it would be edifying to check a few out. To my horror and outrage (or was it “shock and awe” - President Bush’s favorite weapon against the citizens of his own country…?), the first thing I found was that milblogs were being brought under the arm of the vast U.S. military [3] PR campaign. Taking a page out of the [4] Wal-Mart book, U.S. Central Command has been cultivating bloggers as part of a [5] viral marketing strategy to drive traffic to CENTCOM’s own web site. It’s certainly a lot easier to push a message if all the buzzy-bees come to you! And if that doesn’t work, the military has a project to [6] create the illusion of American support to fall back on.

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URLs in this post:
[1] Jon Garfunkel: http://www.civilities.net/
[2] milblogs: http://www.blogsofwar.com/milblogs
[3] PR campaign: http://blogs.washingtonpost.com/earlywarning/2006/01/good_news_the_a.html
[4] Wal-Mart: http://www.nytimes.com/2006/03/07/technology/07blog.html?ex=1143694800&en=b6efa0689a18a96e&
;ei=5070
[5] viral marketing strategy: http://www.defenselink.mil/news/Mar2006/20060302_4370.html
[6] create the illusion of American support: http://www.prnewswire.com/cgi-bin/stories.pl?ACCT=104&STORY=/www/story/03-28-2006/0004328201�
38;EDATE=
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nd+Military+PR
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Military+PR
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w_comment=Milblogs+and+Military+PR&new_comment=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.breakingranks.net%2Fweblog&linktype=Misc
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h=Milblogs+and+Military+PR
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+Military+PR
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